


broken (but still good)

by MFLuder



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Forgiveness, Getting Back Together, Jason Todd Has Issues, M/M, POV Jason Todd, Panic Attacks, Parental Roy, Roy is Arsenal, reference to trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MFLuder/pseuds/MFLuder
Summary: Jason returns to Star City for the first time in five years.
Relationships: Lian Harper & Jason Todd, Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Comments: 9
Kudos: 145





	broken (but still good)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shenanigans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/gifts).



> This little fic is because my good friend had a bad week and while this can't bring your property back, I hope it lifts your mood for a bit. She said _JayRoy_ and _pining_ and _potential_ and well, this is what I got.
> 
> Yes, I went for the full on cheese of Lilo&Sitch as my title inspiration.

Jason’s fingers itch for a cigarette, hands curling in his jacket pockets as he watches the last of a class of kids file out excitedly from the auditorium seating below him. A tired teacher or parental chaperone is the last one out, hands on the shoulder of a straggler.

He doesn’t quite start when someone leans against the railing next to him.

For a few minutes, they’re both silent. Jason uses the time to take in the swirling sharks, the leafy seaweed, the smaller fish that dart around rock and sharks alike. The large room is strangely moody without the sounds of giggling pre-teens, little light but that reflected from the two-story tank. 

He smiles to himself. The last time he was here, Lian had been one of those pre-teens. When they’d left the aquarium, the three of them, together, the Star City sun had been shining; a rare summer’s day. It had seemed so simple then, so easy.

His smile fades. His fingers twitch again, still finding pockets empty.

“This is still Lian’s favorite place, you know,” Roy says, like this is any other day, any other meeting. “She comes here a lot. Says it helps her think.”

“It’s nice,” Jason responds, at a loss for words.

Another minute of silence while both men look down the balcony at the tank. Finally, Roy speaks up again.

“How have you been, Jason?”

Jason takes in a small breath and slowly turns to look at his company. The blue light casts shadows on Roy’s face, making him look older, harsher than he is. The moving water sends waves of lighter blue over his features, keeping his eyes dark and unknown to Jason, while showcasing his copper hair that’s swooped to the side in mockery of his old habits of anti-establishment hairstyles, and sparkling on what might be a few greys.

Roy is no less handsome than he ever was, despite a few additional lines around his eyes and mouth – age, parenting, maybe the vigilante life setting in. If anything, they lend him a gravitas he never had before; even at thirty-three he seemed younger in spite of a rough childhood and lifestyle that should have prematurely aged him.

He’s wearing a brown bomber jacket over tailored jeans and a red tee stretched tight. He’s gone full middle-aged dad, it seems, the jacket revealing a small logo along the bottom hem of a popular men’s activewear company.

Jason bites his bottom lip. He turns back to the aquarium, eyes catching on one particular shark. He thinks it’s a tiger shark. It’s swimming through red kelp which casts its color back on the shark, making it difficult to know if it’s the same one he used to come and visit.

“I’m alive.”

Roy gives a grunt that sounds half like a laugh, half like a choked back sob. Jason swallows something sharp in his own throat back. “Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. But I did already know that. Though not from you, of course. No, your brother had to keep me informed, in those few moments he has to spare for his old teammates. Always something vague, too. I could never tell if Dick simply didn’t know, or if you’d told him _I_ couldn’t know.”

When Jason doesn’t respond, Roy sighs and keeps talking. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Though you’ve got me curious why you’re back now. After all this time.”

Jason takes his hands from his pockets, laces them together, letting them hang over the railing. He’s still watching that one shark, thinks it has seen him, seen a kindred spirit. Swimming in circles, with nowhere to go.

“Lian graduates Friday, right?”

Beside him, Roy grows stiff, pulling himself from his casual pose resting on the railing next to Jason and instead straightening to his full height. He’s still shorter than Jason, always will be, but Jason feels the threat it is, the cold hostility radiating from his once-friend.

“You think you deserve to be there?” Roy asks, voice clipped and sharp, like he’s speaking with barbed wire for teeth and tongue.

“No,” Jason says softly.

“That’s right, Jason Todd. Leaving me was one thing; I’m a grown man, I’ve been left before. But Lian looked up to you. Might have called you ‘uncle’ but thought of you as something more. She was devastated when you didn’t show that day of her field trip. And then you never showed up again. You don’t deserve to see her graduate.”

“You’re right,” Jason replies, just as soft.

Roy’s building himself into a bluster now, beginning to pace in a small, tight line. There’s not much space on the catwalk anyway. It’s only meant as a fun respite through the pirate’s “ship” – a series of complicated ladders, tunnels, and slides that go past half a dozen of the best exhibits. Jason remembers crawling through those same tunnels and slides with Lian, holding her in his lap at some points even though she was thirteen and probably too big, Roy’s barking laugh ringing out behind them as he pretended to not be able to catch up.

The ache in the pit of his stomach flares up once more; it’s been there for five years and returning to Star City hasn’t made it better.

“Everything Lian is, she’s done without you, Jason. It’s been me. Me and Oliver and Dinah and Connor. Not Jade and not you, Jason. I can’t keep Jade away; she’s at least her biological mother. But you, Jason.”

Roy stops, uses his bionic arm to spin Jason around, to shove him back against the wall where there’s a small hole proclaiming _THis WaY to PiRates CoVE!_ in jagged script above a plastic impression of shiplap and seaweed. Jason can’t break free, doesn’t want to; can’t breathe, doesn’t want to.

The hole in his stomach grows at Roy’s touch, the cold, hard grip of his metal fingers digging into his trapezius. Jason goes limp under it, doesn’t fight Roy’s fury. If anything, he pushes up and into it, wanting the punishment. He can barely take his eyes off the dark, shiny digits, constantly flickering his gaze in between them and Roy’s face.

“You were her _chosen_ parent. And you _left_ ,” Roy spits, quite literally, as Jason feels a small drop land on his chin. “For over a year after you ran away, she kept asking me, ‘where’s Uncle JayJay?’ She’d ask if you were on an undercover mission, if you were safe, when you were coming back. You never wrote once. Never dropped in to see her. You didn’t stand at the door when the first boy took her out. You didn’t get to see her and Emi practice. You never saw the archery contests she won, the way she aced every AP exam, her face when she got into Harvard.”

Roy’s chest is heaving, his blue eyes finally showing now that they’re not directly in contrast to the blue waters. He does indeed have a few grey hairs, just at his temple.

Jason wants to run his fingers over them, feel the difference in texture. Instead, he keeps his hands balled up in fists at his own sides.

“When she turned sixteen and you weren’t there, I lost it, Jason. Three years and even though we’d known, I finally told her you left, and you were never coming back. But it wasn’t her fault, no, it was her dad’s, he’d done something to push her Uncle JayJay away.” Roy’s eyes burn, blue bright and hot like a newborn star. They scar Jason’s insides, cut deeper than any y-incision. “We cried, Jason. Over you. I won’t let that happen again.”

His strength is such, that when he lets go of Jason, Jason slides halfway down the wall, his hands resting on his knees, feeling like he’s run a marathon. Roy backs up, turning away. Jason continues to try to catch his breath.

“Goddammit,” Roy hisses. “Why did you come back if you’re not even going to say anything?”

Jason fully drops then, down to his knees, hands resting on a floor thousands of kids have crawled on, disregarding the small particles that are probably decades of spilt drinks and food. “I have nothing to say,” he whispers.

He does nothing until he sees and then feels Roy’s boot toe lift his chin. It’s a long way to look up, but Jason stays; a supplicant.

“Nothing?” Roy snorts.

“I deserve every word,” Jason says, gazing up at his former partner through white bangs.

“You’re fucking right you do.” There’s a sound of disgust and then Jason’s chin is dropped, Roy moving back, resting his body against a wall. Like all the air has been taken from a balloon, he sinks down until his long legs are splayed out on the same carpet, his head resting on the wall behind him.

Jason doesn’t get up, but he shifts so that he’s sitting on his ass instead, knees pulled up to his chest.

“I never blamed you, you know.” Roy sounds tired now, no longer heated. Resigned, maybe.

“I did,” Jason whispers, harsh and bitter. “You _should_ blame me. It was my call. _My_ mistake.”

“I was fine. I mean, okay, I wasn’t _fine_. I was fucking pissed off at losing my arm. But I was going to be. I was already being fitted for prosthetics when you left. You didn’t have to go.”

“Yes, I did,” Jason says, passionately. “Don’t you see? I’m _dangerous_. Always have been. And I hurt you. I could have hurt Lian.”

“You never would have hurt her, Jay. You love her. You would have done as much, if not more than me, to keep her safe.”

“I _couldn’t_ keep you safe, though,” Jason insists. “How do you know I wouldn’t have hurt her? Maybe not intentionally, but through negligence. One small slip-up. A villain, out to get me who went for the people I love.”

“Don’t you see,” Roy says through his teeth, head tilted back against the wall, the hand of his metal arm fisting, “the only way you hurt us was by leaving. That’s what you did wrong. Nothing else.”

“No,” Jason says. “I kept you safe by leaving. I’ve been out there, making sure no one got too close to you.”

“We’d rather have had you with us, Jay. I’d rather have had you in my bed, sleeping beside me, even if someone came and slit our throats in our sleep.”

Jason rocks back up on his knees, planting fists into the ground. His chest hurts, his stomach is an endless pit – a thousand images of Roy dead next to him, of Lian killed, all while Jason is left alive and hurting. He pulls his hands up to his chest; they’re covered in red, thick, red blood. _Roy’s_. He lets out a sob.

They’re dead. After everything, Roy is in his arms, bleeding out, his fire-blue eyes gone cold and lifeless.

Jason can’t breathe. _He can’t—_

“Hey, hey, Jay, pretty bird, stay with me. Breathe. Copy me. In. Out. _Breathe_. That’s it, that’s it, honey: in, out, in, out, in, out.”

Jason shakes and falls apart, but someone’s arms are around him and he thinks he can hear Roy’s voice, telling him it’s all right. Someone places a kiss to his head, then another, then more, moving down from his hair to his forehead to his nose and cheeks until finally, Jason can breathe once more.

He looks up and the only thing he sees before warm lips meet his, are Roy’s bright eyes – filled with life and sorrow, and worry, and love.

Then, it’s like Roy is breathing all that life into Jason with his kiss. It’s slow and kind. Their lips meet softly, but neither hesitant nor frenzied. Roy tastes the same, of mint gum and cold brew. Jason knows him intimately and Roy knows him just as well, knows how Jason will shudder under his hand as he wraps his remaining human one behind his neck, how to lick into Jason’s mouth just right to get a whimper.

Then, in between kisses, Roy speaks, “I never found anyone else.” Another searching kiss, this time, a little wetter, a little hotter. “Five years, Jay. Could have been one hundred.” Roy’s tongue, curling around his, the pads of his fingers tracing a pattern of freckles on Jason’s neck, just like he used to. “There’s no one but you.”

Jason blinks his eyes back against tears, even as he sinks deeper into the kiss, into Roy’s tight hold on him. There’s been others for Jason. But they meant nothing; company for a cold night, the feeling in his gut worse with each time he let someone touch him. A momentary pleasure he always regretted in the morning.

“I forgive you. Jason. I never thought I needed to. But I see now _you_ did. I forgive you,” Roy says, whispered against Jason’s lips, his throat.

It’s the last straw. No tears come, but still, Jason is wracked by huge sobs, cries he hasn’t let out in five years, hasn’t given voice to. He buries his face and his hands in Roy’s chest, his shirt, clinging like a small child as he says, over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Roy simply holds tight and lets him cry in the middle of an aquarium where any minute now, a fresh group of kids will come bursting in. Where one lone tiger shark that Lian once nicknamed Jay swims around and around in circles, but maybe it’s not quite the trap Jason thought it was.

Roy’s hands in his hair, drifting over Jason’s face, metal and human alike.

“I forgive you.”

~~~

At the end of the week, on Friday, May thirteenth at three pm, Jason stands at the back of a crowded gymnasium, watching as Lian Harper – with straight black hair like her mother and those gorgeous frosty blue eyes she inherited from Roy – crosses the stage in an emerald green gown and cap and makes her valedictorian speech.

He tries to slip away after, but hiding even further back than he was, Jade, dressed in jeans and a green leather jacket, steps out of the shadows, long enough for their eyes to meet. He’s seen Jade more than he has Roy or Lian in the last five years, each attending to their own corner of League business. Her face shows its usual hardness but her eyes, for once, are soft and kind, almost fond. He doubts it is for him. Still, it’s a unique enough experience that he waits a moment too long, and he sees her eyes move from his to something – or someone – behind him and then she slips back into shadows that shouldn’t be in a high school gym, and before he can follow, he hears a yell.

“Uncle JayJay? Uncle JayJay!”

He turns around in enough time to catch a five foot nine, leggy Lian jumping into his arms, gown getting tangled, cap flying off as Roy swiftly catches it. Jason hugs her back tight, not letting her drop, not giving up on her warm embrace. His nose settles into her hair that still smells of bubblegum and grape. She’s shaky like a colt, trembling in his grasp, and he’s doing his best to not quake like her.

When she finally unwraps her legs from his waist and steps back on the ground, she doesn’t look embarrassed or self-conscious, even as Roy and some other kids her age stare. Tears are prickling her eyes, but she wipes them away without a thought, turning her beaming smile onto the kids who have gathered around.

“Rachel, Deena, Ace, Tom. This is—. This my other dad. He’s been gone for a long time. But he’s back now, for good. Right?”

The last is said to him, head tilted, under Roy’s watchful and leery gaze. Her eyes beseech him, and Jason can’t help the smile that takes over his face as his stomach finally stops hurting after all these years. 

Jason responds, directing it to Lian, to Roy whose eyes match hers, even as his body language is closed off, afraid of rejection once more. “Yeah. Yeah, baby. I’m not going anywhere, ever again. I’m so proud of you.”

He chokes the last bit out and she hugs him again with a happy squeal while her friends awkwardly smile and say things like “we’ll see you at the party,” as they slip away into the crowd.

Jason doesn’t care, just pulls her in tighter. He feels someone grab for his hand and when he looks up, it’s Roy, who threads their fingers – human and metal – together and steps in on the other side of Lian and the three of them hug it out in the middle of a crowded high school gym as dozens of others flow around them.

“I’m not going anywhere, ever again,” Jason says to Lian, his eyes searching Roy’s, and this time, he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow and chat with me [on tumblr](http://mf-luder-xf.tumblr.com) and/or [twitter](https://twitter.com/mf_luder_xf)!!


End file.
